The quality of the child's emotional bond or attachment to the mother has been shown to be an important predictor of the child's emotional and social functioning in early childhood. The present research focuses on the nature of attachment relationships in children whose mothers are clinically depressed compared with children of normal mothers. The Ainsworth paradigm was used to assess attachment. Insecure attachment was found to be significantly more frequent in offspring of parents with a major affective disorder, with the highest rate in children of bipolar parents.